Today I saw the aftermath of the SFPD shooting a mentally ill homeless man. Jesse saw a body get wheeled out of a building. I accidentally ruined one of Jesse’s favorite Japanese knives. He still came home and started cooking dinner, because he’s amazing.

While the sweet potatoes were in the oven, we start grooming Rigby on the back deck. Jesse brushes him while I start clipping his back toenails.

Rigby hates his feet being touched/played with. Hates it.

I get through one back paw, then the other. He flails a bit, but does fairly well.

Two paws is enough for today, I think, and give him a massive treat and a hearty back scratch, but he looks at me like I’ve betrayed him.

After a couple of minutes, I notice blood on the carpet in the room next to the kitchen. I realize I’ve clipped the very last nail just a fraction too short (thanks to his kicking) and it’s bleeding everywhere.

Everywhere. And it won’t stop.

Because of the bleeding, we bring him back to the kitchen – tiles are easier to clean. We close all available doors and Rachael sits in the door-less exit to block him from leaving and going onto the carpet.

I start wiping the floor behind him as he walks in circles around the kitchen, totally confused. We try multiple home remedies (the corn starch thing, ice, compression) and every time the bleeding slows – right before it starts up again.

During all this chaos, Jesse is still cooking dinner, and it looks fucking amazing – wild salmon, asparagus, sweet potatoes, carrots. Lord. And he’s bought a bottle of beautiful Pinot Noir. I’m so ready to eat.

And dinner is ready. But the dog is still bleeding everywhere, and we need to keep him on the tiles until the bleeding slows.

So we disinfect our hands, and we eat that incredible meal sitting on the floor in the doorway. We eat while watching Rigby stand in the corner of the kitchen surrounded by bloody pawprints, staring at us, somehow both confused and bored.

We finish eating, his bleeding has finally slowed, and I sit next to him, trying to make sure he doesn’t lick it and start the flow again.

Of course, as soon as I look away for 0.5 seconds, that’s exactly what he does. The bleeding starts up, and he wanders off before I can stop him. I follow behind him with disinfectant and paper towel, frantically cleaning the floor like a goddamn Winter Olympic curler, and realize I’m just going to have to wrap his damn paw up.

I wrap it in absorbent gauze and medical tape, satisfied. Then I realize blood is still seeping through the bandage and onto the tiles.

Solution? Wrap his bandaged paw in a ziploc bag and secure it with duct tape.

Now we have a dog that refuses to put his rear left paw on the ground, a house full of people who can’t stop laughing at him, and a woman (me) that feels like some kind of horrible animal abuser.